Desert Monitor
Varanus griseus · Reptile
A brown, yellow or grey monitor lizard, usually about a metre long and up to nearly two, from North Africa through Arabia to Central Asia and north-west India, on bare sand and clay. It eats mice, birds, eggs, reptiles and even cobras and vipers, shelters in burrows at midday and sleeps from about September to April. Its bite is venomous: nausea, dizziness, a racing heart and hard breathing within twenty minutes. Some 17,000 skins a year are traded, and the leather trade has nearly wiped out some populations; it is now on CITES Appendix I.
- Danger
- Dangerous if cornered
- How it is met
- Alone, by day
- Size
- Medium
- In winter
- Sleeps through winter
Where it lives
Gives
Sources
- Desert monitor. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026.
- Varan du désert. Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre, 2026.
Open it in Biomes — MGS Toolbox